– Gabrielle Calvocoressi –
Let yourself get loose and double. It's funny how he says that too. We're in bed or
we're lying
in the lake on someone's raft and I start talking
worrying some thing
and he says, Shhh just let yourself
get loose
and double. What does that mean I guess to let go to go and let him in. We're in
bed or we're
lying on the wooden raft (is it the ranchers?) in the middle of the
lake, light
coming to us in waves from shore. I say,
The war
into his shoulder like a question like a kiss so that he'll stop me before I really
start to say it
but can tell myself I tried the war the word makes my lips open
enough to feel
the warmth on his skin the question makes them close
so he
turns over saying You want to do it here? And I decide what it means out there on the
lake, the light
like a visitation, the raft bobbing before we've started moving I
start to worry
He says, Let's talk about the war I say no I want the other
thing,
I want to let myself get loose and double like the light does here on some stranger's raft
I want
to do the other thing I want to see us blossom
so we're four
so he's two above me while the green spreads
like
wings like wings
***
***
Falcon in the trees
bobcat in the grasses
The hermit took us through the orchard to see the white pomegranate. I asked when they'd
be ripe.
In the fall. Past us, I thought.
if the Bandleader cared it didn't show
though he liked the hermit or the idea of the hermit "How much do you
think?"
How much does a hermit cost all through dinner
and how we couldn't take the pomegranates home
I asked if they'd get red and the hermit said no they'd stay like this.
I asked, "Are they sweet?" "Sweeter." then deeper
into the
orchard until
I couldn't see the Bandleader anymore. Just green everywhere and the hermit's
straw hat
like the grasses on the ranch we stayed at not gold but--
I can't say. Something like gold. I followed him in deeper, not missing the Bandleader
at all. He
said, "Autumn's good."
And I said, "You mean better?" All the greens around us like stars the way
they shimmered
almost wet with
the sun but not
"No." "Not better. Just good"
I felt a little sick in all the green, like right before a school play starts
everyone huddlled in the wings not
nervous just
Too close. I said, "I saw a bobcat in the grasses. Last night." To steady
myself I touched
the trunk
which was cooler
"Mulberry" he said "That's a mulberry."
ignoring the bobcat, which the Bandleader hadn't believed,
"You didn't see a bobcat." I did, I
know it was
"A bobcat lived around here," the hermit said
and put a berry in my hand. The Bandleader walking up to lean down
and take it in his
mouth.
***
***
Locked away we're like a Russian novel
the hermit and the cowboy
me stepping from the train
a world of snow
his Great Coat a den of baby foxes
skinned and sewn together
We're a fields of stars
all the peasants' sheep shorn in haste
made into a carpet placed beneath my feet
the stationmaster's son sent
through the night to find us
this small room.
He's the foxes and the wolves
he's the doves with their curved necks
waiting out the rain he's the grass
starting to shake he's the medals
on his own bureau he's the silver
glinting on his horse's bridle
I said, Samovar sounds like a knight
It's just a fancy tea pot. He's my samovar
he's the steam that makes my cheeks glow
so all the women talk he's the snow
covering the wolf's tracks the party
of sleds sent out and not returning
He gives me his alphabet of notes
One by one each day. He's a thousand pages
read across the endless plains til he rides hard
beneath my window and helps me down
as the first flakes fall and I say, You brought
the first snow for me